ASK THE MXPERTS: WHY IS GRAND PRIX MATH SO FUZZY?

Jorge Prado is the king of Saturday’s qualifying races. The points that he earned on Saturday might  just earn him the 2023 FIM 450 World Championship.

WHY IS GRAND PRIX MATH SO FUZZY?

Dear MXperts,

After Supercross went bust with all the riders getting injured, I decided to not watch the AMA Nationals and started watching MXGP. I’ve seen a few GPs, but I don’t understand how a rider who doesn’t win a Grand Prix can actually gain points on the rider who did win the GP. I’m speaking specifically about Jorge Prado and Romain Febvre.

The true reason is a mixture of stupidity, greed and revenge by the Luongo-run promoting group. After the 2022 rider-led strike of Saturday qualifying races, when the star riders elected to sit out Saturday qualifying races because the promoters refused to listen to their complaints about dangerous track conditions, the MXGP brain trust changed the World Championship point system by paying points to the 10 fastest qualifiers in both 250 and 450 qualifying on Saturday. Saturday qualifying is a one-moto race for gate pick for Sunday’s GP, and many of the riders don’t think it’s worth the risk when they have already had a timed qualifying session earlier on Saturday for gate pick in the Qualifier moto.

MXGP wanted to force the Grand Prix riders to race Saturday’s qualifiers to help draw a bigger crowd of paying spectators for Saturday’s previously meaningless EMX races. The leverage on the riders was that the MXGP organizers would  pay World Championship points to the top 10 riders in the 250 and 450 Saturday qualifying races. They pay 10 points to first, 9 points to second, 8 points to third and so on down to 1 point for 10th. These points are not added to their race results for Sunday’s Grand Prix, but they are added to the rider’s Grand Prix points standings for the season.

Thus, a rider who won both motos in the Grand Prix of Slowjamistan would earn 50 points (25+25), but if he didn’t score any points in Saturday’s qualifying races, he could lose points in the series standings because a rider who went 2-2 for 44 points in the GP and got the 10-point bonus for winning Saturday’s qualifying race would have 54 points added to his season total.

If you just look at the first 18 Grands Prix of 2023, this idiotic system gave Jorge Prado 136 bonus points (that have never been added to any previous Grand Prix season—and are the equivalent for five Grand Prix moto wins), while his archrival, Romain Febvre, only got 113 bonus points. That means that Jorge Prado has earned 23 more bonus points than Febvre (which is only two points less than what a GP pays for winning a moto). Third place in the 450 title chase, Jeremy Seewer,  only earned 102 bonus points.

With two races to go Jorge Prado has a 67-point lead over Febvre, which means that if Febvre wins the next four motos (100 points). Prado will still win if he makes the top ten in all four remaining motos.  Jorge only failed to make the top ten in 1 out of 36 motos this season. Additionally, you have to add in how many bonus points Prado could get in Saturday qualifying at the last two rounds (after all, Jorge has won maximum points in 10 of the 17 Qualifiers this season—the Dutch qualifier was canceled due to rain).

 

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